Love-Bombing?

[Anonymous]

how does this connect to seed? at seed love was unconditional.


"The opposite of love-bombing is unconditional love. Love-bombing is highly conditional.

The cults will love you to death while you represent a prospective convert to their group. As a member a tight family love will surround you as you faithfully promote their cause.

However, when it is clear that a prospect will not join the group or a member voices doubts, create waves, or leaves the group, all love ceases.

Indeed scorn is immediately heaped on these individuals and remaining members are told not to have any contact with them.

All time, effort and love-bombing is then directed towards new prospects and the faithful members"

sorry, dont see connection between above quote and seed life. Does anyone see the connection?

[Antigen]

A few years back, I ran into a couple of Seedlings at a doughnut shop in Tamarac. I could tell they were Seedlings because of their Seed tshirts and identical, pageboy type haircuts.

So I said hi, told them my name and that my family had been involved in The Seed some years ago and asked them to say hi to Art for me. They looked at eachother, said not a word, grabbed their couple of dozen doughnuts and ran, visibly shaken, back to their car. I wonder if they anguished over whether or not to report themselves for talking to a split?

Unconditional love? Never in my experience. You were either in good standing or you were personna nongrata.

Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
--Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American author

[Anonymous]

On 2004-11-08 08:58:00, Anonymous wrote:

"how does this connect to seed? at seed love was unconditional.

 :rofl:  :rofl:  :rofl:  :rofl:  :rofl:

I can't even believe you wrote that.  I spit my beer out all over the screen laughing when I saw it. :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

[Anonymous]

Dont' understand how love bombing took place at seed. Please explain if you saw how love-bombing actually was used at seed. it was more like real friendships with very close bonds. . .

[cleveland]

Anyone who left the seed was a sort of a non-person...rarely spoken about, except maybe to say, what an asshole, I can't believe they left...

This may have changed in recent years but in general, if you were an 'outsider' (and someone who left was certainly and outsider) you were considered to be a druggie or to have a druggie attitude at the very least and you, as a seedling, weren't supposed to associate with them. Am I wrong? After 8 years, I left in the dead of night and did anyone ever try and contact me? Nope. Did I contact them? No - I could guess what I would be told - that I was an asshole for leaving.

What's more conditional than that?

(It may be that Art and others kept a place in their heart for me and others who left, but I didn't know that. People who left were considered to have chosen non-existance.)

[Anonymous]

Have an opinion that differs from theirs and you're OUT!!!  Period!!!  and I can hear it coming now.....I know, you felt sorry for and prayed for the poor souls who didn't embrace the Seed's ideology....it wasn't really conditional love cause you still loved them, right?  You just shut them out of your lives along with their parents who were committed to the program. :roll:  :roll:  :roll:

Tell me, when you were there what was the policy regarding splits, pull offs and terminations??

[Somejoker]

On 2004-11-08 10:26:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Dont' understand how love bombing took place at seed. Please explain if you saw how love-bombing actually was used at seed. it was more like real friendships with very close bonds. . ."

You just don't understand what love bombing is and how it relates to cults.

Love bombing is the automatic "love"  given to cult members in good standing. Now, in reality you cannot love someone just because they sign on a dotted line, are forced or volunteer for treatment or become a member of a group, that is not how humans function. You cannot "love" someone on Monday because they are a seedling in good standing and refuse to ever speak to that person again on Tuesday because they decide the seed is no longer for them.

So it wasn't love as recognized by normal society, it was something else.

What was it and how was it accomplished in the seed?

Love bombing is a tool to sucker people into cults and bond them to the group and to exclude them from the rest of society. Love bombing is typically utilized in group settings by talking about love, singing about love, publically showing your love for the group, and confessing to the entire group your newfound capacity for love.


In the seed it was done in the form of "love raps" where the normal threat of "coming down on you" would be suspended, people would take turns talking about how the group created love inside of them and crowd would be whipped into a love fest and often moved to tears. It was also done by repetiously singing love songs to our leader and his wife who most of us didn't even know. Furether,  It was also required and expected you told all seedlings you loved them constantly.

Love bombing was a primary tool of the seed.


UnConditional? NEVER in a cult.

Seedlings said thru clentched teeth "I love you" with contempt to former Seedlings  who attempted to try to have a rational normal conversation with them. and this is all they would say. You could have a 10 year "love" relationship with someone that would end overnight if they decided to move on away from the Seed. If you dared to speak with them and befriend them, your program would be started over.

Seedlings refused to associate with anyone that didn't walk the straight and arrow seedling path of expectations. When you love someone unconditionally, membership in an exclusive society is not a precondition to love.

But Anon, I suspect you already know all this somewhere inside where you refuse to go because it would cause you to critically examine the processes you devoted your life to. You are coloring your past experience with the lens of someone who wants to believe the Seed was something different than it really was.

The seed was a cult. The sooner you come to terms with that fact the better. Whether you feel it was a positive or negative experience in your life is an entirely different subject.

[cleveland]

Whether it is 'real love' or not...

I think love is two things - first of all, a feeling. Second, action.

At the Seed, we did feel real love. But we were also taught that 'loving' people meant excluding them if they were 'out of line,' or had left. Or being hard on them in Raps.

Certainly, this is real love. The feeling can be real, the actions can be thought to be loving. The difference is, someone in power is telling you how to feel and how to act.

It's no different from when kids in a divorce are told, 'your father loves you but he can't be home right now. It's better for now if you don't try to call him, it would hurt him too much.' The kids love their dad, but someone in a power position (mom) tells them how they must act.

I don't think this is healthy for adults. Your love is tainted by power, by who's in, who's out. You can't be real.

This causes 'cognitive dissonance.'

[Anonymous]

Well, I never loved anyone in the Seed but I said it constantly because I had to in order to keep from getting started over. In fact I remember the first time I said it, it was to my oldcomer at about 1 in the morning. I still remember the deep sense of self betrayal I thought, and I even remember I said it because I had made a conscious decision to comply.

Love?  bullshit. I didn't even like most of the people in the seed.

Compliance with cultic dogma?  Absolutely.

[Tony Stark]

Just because of this love bombing, but being rebuked for me was something I dreaded but klearned from. Not to be a Seedling just to want to accomplish things and stay out of prisons. I was a juvinille and I looked up to all of them then , but now I feek somewat alienated as the otherSeedlings around me after the St. Pete Sed closed went to a higher level of mind-fucking, and it was all negative.

The right of self-defense is the first law of nature . . and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

--St. George Tucker, in his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries

[marshall]

"The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under
constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own
initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a
victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes
himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people.
His servitude is strictly objective."

Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley, 1958

[Robin Martin]

"...and in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love that you make..." BEATLES

"If you think you're going through hell, keep going"  Winston Churchill

[Somejoker]

On 2004-11-11 19:34:00, marshall wrote:

""The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under

constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own

initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a

victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes

himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people.

His servitude is strictly objective."



Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley, 1958

"

Now there is a quote for the archives.  Thanks Cleveland.  Many if that isn't spot on topic, nothing is.